


Can’t Resurrect Men with Mighty Hymns

by Shaitanah



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have one day to mourn and the rest of the year to live their lives. [Alex, Sara, ensemble]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can’t Resurrect Men with Mighty Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Prison Break belongs to Paul Scheuring and FOX, etc. Title, with a minor change, from Secrets of the Undersea Bell by Austronautalis.

**Can’t Resurrect Men With Mighty Hymns**

 

As former addicts they should probably have some kind of an understanding. The truth is, there is no such thing as ‘former’ when it comes to addiction. Being clean does not mean you are through with it. It simply means you have moved on to less obvious things to depend on.

 

Grief is a form of addiction.

 

Alex knows instantly, from the look in Sara’s eyes, from her bearing, from the way she clutches MJ’s hand in hers, that it must take all of her willpower to keep away from that grave throughout the rest of the year. When he thinks back to the convulsions of grief jolting violently through his body, which was a little like coming off of Sona’s dirty heroin, that’s when that understanding kicks in.

 

Things were rotten with grief back then. Shattered and soaked in acid that ate through every link of the never-ending chain.

 

“Origami?” Alex frowns as he watches MJ fold a paper crane out of a frayed newspaper sheet. “Seriously?” He flashes twenty years forward and thanks whichever deity is listening that he might as well be dead by then because a Scofield and an extra sheet of paper equal a gunshot in a room filled with propane.

 

“Before your imagination runs wild,” Sara chuckles, “I’ll have you know that he tears up paper faster than I can buy it.”

 

The boy chooses to look up just then and grins. His eyes are familiar, but none of that gut-wrenching intensity is in yet. He reminds Alex a little of Cameron (because every kid this age will forever be a little like Cameron) and a lot of Michael – which hurts no less.

 

There is only one day when they let grief overrun them, but even so they make sure it does not decompose them. They have seen both sides of it – the destructive and the unifying – just like they have seen both sides of the sizzling Panamanian sun.

 

“MJ, though?” This is something Alex has long since wanted to remark upon, but you have to be careful with such things, you need to choose your timing well. “You named him after–.”

 

“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna call him Aldo.” Sara and Lincoln trade glances. It’s a very old injoke that Alex is somehow half in on. It’s a matter of trust, a matter of how far they have come to be exchanging stories like this. Old stories from the days before when people like Aldo Burrows and Michael Scofield and so many others weren’t fiction.

 

Halfway down the road, Alex takes a humourous turns, too. “So you named him after Michael Jackson?”

 

Sara’s smiles are rare and have a sense of fall about them.

 

* * *

 

There is one day a year when it all comes rushing back. When she calls MJ by his full name, Michael, and does not wince. And they all have a beer and trade stories and occasional laughs – and maybe Alex will stay up after Lincoln and Sucre are fast asleep, and they will sit next to each other in Sara’s living-room, TV on, a glimpse of Kellerman who is a bigwig congressman now, and their hands will rest on the sofa just short of brushing against each other–

 

and everything is a little like a distant dream. Which leaves no room for Felicia’s warm hand cupping the back of his neck or an echo of Pam’s kisses in the corner of his mouth – exactly where the two parts of his life collide, sending ripples all over his heart. It’s just one day when nothing of the sort actually exists.

 

Somewhere in the house Sara keeps photos of Michael. Snapshots of their wedding. Newspaper clippings, maybe. Alex never asks to have a look.

 

Sometimes MJ falls asleep right next to him, relinquishing his inherited wariness. His warm weight rests against Alex in those numbered moments of miscalculation. Alex sits still. The old, soiled photo of Cameron that has been through Sona and the sea and whatnot is still in his wallet.

 

When MJ feels like it, he calls him Uncle Alex. It may be inappropriate, but neither Sara, nor Lincoln seem to mind, at least not verbally. Alex eases himself into that new skin. Looking for a reason to stay away from the kid because he cannot bear the idea of helping him throughout school and college and life. It’s not his job.

 

The one time he ignores that is when he and MJ go stargazing one night when Sara works the night shift at the hospital. It happens when MJ is good with paper cranes and is moving on to something more complex, and Lang brings up the idea that maybe she and Alex should start a real family. She doesn’t say the words, but he knows exactly what she means. Real families are impossible without kids.

 

“Thank you,” Sara says about the stargazing, sounding earnest.

 

So many things are rooted in the past.

 

There is a recurring joke that MJ should not have any siblings because he might want to go to prison for them. Alex always remembers it when Lang talks about ‘real family’.

 

When it’s time to go, he kisses Sara on the forehead, just above the nosebridge – precisely the spot he had once threatened Michael to put a shank into – and takes his leave, grateful that they don’t have eternity to spare.

 

 _December 27, 2010_


End file.
